


Gears Churning

by miichiyo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, arakar, arakat, karadia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:57:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miichiyo/pseuds/miichiyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia reflecting her relationship with Karkat before she became a robot. Now is only yearning and regret, due to the way he's afraid of her now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gears Churning

**Author's Note:**

> Intended to be Aradia<3Karkat! 

It was always a bit off how he was able to slap that silly little smile on your painted lips. How maybe, despite his harsh words you sensed a sort of kindness and fragility you didn’t feel in any other. Talking to him was never a chore in your mind, even when you were so thouroughly exhausted that you were on the edge of fainting right at your desk, yet you blinked tiredness away, if only to accompany him to sleep first.

You worried about him. You worried about the circles under his eyes. You worried about the fact it seemed he’d never left the computer at all. You worried about the tiredness that seemed to seep into his voice. Large grey words, pumping with energy and creativity were so deceiving to how you perceived him, and you truly disliked that. Maybe that was how he wanted to be seen. Loud, obnoxious, constantly topping everyone else’s volume. And yes, perhaps that is how he was sometimes. But maybe you were just graced, for you had heard him speak when he was not energetic, when he no longer had the drive to screech and shriek and scream. A softness, and a tenderness you adored hearing on those late nights, even if they would occasionally rub you the wrong way, almost like he had given up. Of course, your doubts were often cast away the next day when he found the strength to continue being Karkat.

He looks so exhausted, these nights on the meteor. He won’t allow himself to sleep. He won’t allow himself to rest for even a moment. You wonder, wonder what might even bring him to pull such heavy weight upon him. The stress is most obviously taking it’s toll on their gracious leader, as evidenced by his increasingly jumpy movements, his even more frequent outbursts, and the darkening of those bags under his eyes. He looks so cold, so pale.

You wish you could hold him.

Hold him in your arms, cradle him, protect him from the nightmares. Stroke those dark circles from plaguing his beautiful face away with your thumb, kiss away the dryness and the bitemarks from his lips. Maybe run your fingers through his disheveled mess of hair, just like how you used to. Oh only lord knows what you’d give to hear his gentle hum of contentedness. What you’d give to hear that soft purr.

But you can’t, can you? That’s been stripped from you, wrenched from your hands. And you’re angry for it. You’re just so damn angry. And the worst is that you can’t even help it. You must maintain your facade, express only apathy, you simply must. There will be no destroying, there will be no violence from you. But that is the way it must be.

Yet you remain a vessel of the most turbulent of emotions, sitting idly where you sit, gazing into the nothingness, contemplating. Your cobalt lashes clink together. How unnatural the sound. Cameras shifting to glance upon your chilled hand, you bring it into a fist, metal fingers clanking. You hate it. You hate every part of your new body. You hate the noises, you hate your blood, you hate your movements, abilities, your flat tone. Oh, how you wish you could sing to him, just like how he used to ask. He never asks anymore. You can’t really say you blame him.

He doesn’t even speak with you anymore. Striding around, shoulders hunched, he exchanges a word with Sollux, Terezi, Feferi, Eridan, Vriska. It’s as if you do not exist. It would be for the better that you do not, wouldn’t it? It’s times like these you wish you would’ve stayed dead. Times like these that whatever is in your grasp is being mottled and deformed by the clenching of your disgusting grey fist. You see it. You see that guilty glance of his over his shoulder. He isn’t sure, but you do.

And again, you find yourself returned to reality. Staring down at the monotonous color scheme of your entire being, you notice the soft red light cast on yourself. You wish you could even cry, because you truly, truly would. A robot, yearning to keep the one you love so dear warm like you always tried, but now your warmth is replaced by the biting freeze of your steel; your lullabies replaced by the noise of the gears churning in your specially crafted skull. Maybe if you could simply ask Equius to make is so that you always smile. Make it so that perhaps you might be able to sing or laugh or make him smile. Normalize your eyes, your movements. But nothing is going to change, and you know it. You know it in your scraped soul, your artificial heart, your tincan’s bones. It’s never going to be like how it used to. You can tell in the way he stiffens when he’s around you. In the way he becomes hushed when he notices you’re listening. You can tell by the way he looks at you.

He’s afraid. He’s afraid of you. He’s afraid of everything you are and everything you encompass. Not one sliver of chance in which you would blame him. You hate yourself too. You detest those cold uncaring eyes. You loathe the chinking of your skirt. You feel with such fury the hatred of everything you are deep in the recesses of your metallic container. He’s staying as far away from you as he possibly can. 

And maybe it’s better this way.


End file.
